$6500 and an alligator purse
Oct. 14th, 2007 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksWell, tonight I finally exceeded my total win for last year; although, paradoxically, I'm somewhat behind my position last year on October 14th.
With typical online irony, I got there via a tournament - the FTP Ironman - of which I have played a grand total of three this year. 22nd out of 264 for $100 and, as usual, a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. The Gold freeroll is probably less value than the Silver, because a higher proportion of players seem to turn up. I would guess there was an 80% turnout. But with 90 places being paid, getting into the money is not much challenge.
However, as with many tournaments these days, there is this strange jump from nil to x amount (in this case, $80), and then a long wait before it moves up another $20 (to $100), followed by a shift at the final two tables up to $200, and then to $300 for ninth place.
So the jumps are $80 (90th or better), $20 (45th or better), $100 (18th or better), $100 (9th or better). As mathematical progressions go, I'm sure that that has a logic somewhere, but I can't see it. Players (and organizers, I guess) just see the prize money ($80, $100, $200, $300) and fail to look at the amount by which the prize money changes.
As someone renowned for anal-retentiveness and neatness, such asymetry in shifts irritates me, because it can't help but distort things unnecessarily. Not as insane as super-satellites in the distortion, but a distortion nevertheless.
I just look at these tournaments as an advanced (or, actually, a very non-advanced) form of rakeback. Given my devastating incompetence at the game, I just try to make sure of some prize money, because that's my best EV. After that, I just want to get good cards at the right time. It's about as non-Andy-Ward as you can get. But since I don't really enjoy any of it anyway, I might as well play it my own way rather than try to force myself into some other kind of artificial construct. Mainly because whenever I have tried to play that other way, it's gone horribly wrong and I've liked the tournament structure even less than I did before.
I know that it's ridiculous to say that "tournaments aren't poker", because they obviously are. They are just a different game, linked to cash poker only by the way you measure how the stacks of chips are moved around. I could sit down and give tournaments my all, mainly because the donk supply there is greater, but every time I play a tournament, the knowledge that I have to push in a certain situation with cards that I would fold in a cash game, because of the fact that the blinds will be going up soon, offends my aesthetic sensibilities.
This probably goes back to the fact that when I started playing poker there basically weren't any tournaments in the UK. And it was a good 10 years after tournaments came into being here that any kind of mathematical theories came into common currency. My brain is just too hard-wired to cash play. I suspect that this is one reason that I can't adjust to sit'n'goes. In cash games, the big winner is rarely the guy who wins the most on a particular evening -- the big winner is usually the quiet accumulator, letting other guys have their "lucky nights". But tournaments are about manufacturing "lucky nights" -- because that is how the prize money system works. You want six nights of 1st,1st,10th,10th,10th,10th, rather than six nights of 2nd,2nd,3rd,3rd,3rd,3rd. I spent my putative years of playing poker looking to be the regular second- or third-biggest winner of the night, but never being the big loser. That's how you won money. In tournaments, that style is the kiss of death.
It's weird; I know how it's done in tournaments; I can do it (not to top-level standard, but competently enough at the lower levels); I've even won my fair share and I'm net up in online tournaments over the years, and yet I don't enjoy it.
And the other downside is; you have to leave it a good few hours after busting out of the tourney before you can let yourself sit down at the cash table, because your mindset is all wrong.
With typical online irony, I got there via a tournament - the FTP Ironman - of which I have played a grand total of three this year. 22nd out of 264 for $100 and, as usual, a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. The Gold freeroll is probably less value than the Silver, because a higher proportion of players seem to turn up. I would guess there was an 80% turnout. But with 90 places being paid, getting into the money is not much challenge.
However, as with many tournaments these days, there is this strange jump from nil to x amount (in this case, $80), and then a long wait before it moves up another $20 (to $100), followed by a shift at the final two tables up to $200, and then to $300 for ninth place.
So the jumps are $80 (90th or better), $20 (45th or better), $100 (18th or better), $100 (9th or better). As mathematical progressions go, I'm sure that that has a logic somewhere, but I can't see it. Players (and organizers, I guess) just see the prize money ($80, $100, $200, $300) and fail to look at the amount by which the prize money changes.
As someone renowned for anal-retentiveness and neatness, such asymetry in shifts irritates me, because it can't help but distort things unnecessarily. Not as insane as super-satellites in the distortion, but a distortion nevertheless.
I just look at these tournaments as an advanced (or, actually, a very non-advanced) form of rakeback. Given my devastating incompetence at the game, I just try to make sure of some prize money, because that's my best EV. After that, I just want to get good cards at the right time. It's about as non-Andy-Ward as you can get. But since I don't really enjoy any of it anyway, I might as well play it my own way rather than try to force myself into some other kind of artificial construct. Mainly because whenever I have tried to play that other way, it's gone horribly wrong and I've liked the tournament structure even less than I did before.
I know that it's ridiculous to say that "tournaments aren't poker", because they obviously are. They are just a different game, linked to cash poker only by the way you measure how the stacks of chips are moved around. I could sit down and give tournaments my all, mainly because the donk supply there is greater, but every time I play a tournament, the knowledge that I have to push in a certain situation with cards that I would fold in a cash game, because of the fact that the blinds will be going up soon, offends my aesthetic sensibilities.
This probably goes back to the fact that when I started playing poker there basically weren't any tournaments in the UK. And it was a good 10 years after tournaments came into being here that any kind of mathematical theories came into common currency. My brain is just too hard-wired to cash play. I suspect that this is one reason that I can't adjust to sit'n'goes. In cash games, the big winner is rarely the guy who wins the most on a particular evening -- the big winner is usually the quiet accumulator, letting other guys have their "lucky nights". But tournaments are about manufacturing "lucky nights" -- because that is how the prize money system works. You want six nights of 1st,1st,10th,10th,10th,10th, rather than six nights of 2nd,2nd,3rd,3rd,3rd,3rd. I spent my putative years of playing poker looking to be the regular second- or third-biggest winner of the night, but never being the big loser. That's how you won money. In tournaments, that style is the kiss of death.
It's weird; I know how it's done in tournaments; I can do it (not to top-level standard, but competently enough at the lower levels); I've even won my fair share and I'm net up in online tournaments over the years, and yet I don't enjoy it.
And the other downside is; you have to leave it a good few hours after busting out of the tourney before you can let yourself sit down at the cash table, because your mindset is all wrong.
